Here is the link to the Marquette fan board preview of St. John's, with the season outlook included at the end.
[URL]https://www.anonymouseagle.com...johns-red-storm-anderson-champagnie-alexander[/URL]
Outlook: If you’ve been reading all of the Big East team previews in the series so far, I think it’s safe to say that you might have noticed a theme up until now running through most of them: There are an awful lot of questions about almost every team in the league, at least the ones we’ve talked about. However, up til now, the question marks have been hovering over things that are potentially fatal flaws in the teams. Is Butler actually going to be better just because they bring back all five seniors for their extra year of eligibility? What is Connecticut going to do without James Bouknight to drive things forward? Can the freshmen make an immediate impact for Creighton? Will Providence find a point guard
and someone to replace David Duke’s production?You get the idea. If those questions end up with negative answers, they are going to lead to very bad seasons for the teams involved.St. John’s is not different than their league-mates this year in that there are a lot of questions to be asked about how things are going to go in 2021-22. The difference here is that the Johnnies’ questions don’t point at things that could potentially make or break their season. They have Julian Champagnie who is going to be, at the absolute worst, a unanimous selection for the preseason all-conference team and is almost assuredly going to get Preseason Player of the Year votes if not actually get the award. They have Posh Alexander, who has a legitimate case to get votes to be on the preseason all-Big East team, and if the league announces a preseason First and Second Team, he’ll almost definitely be one of the 10 guys honored.If you have two of the 10 best players, at the very least 15 best, in the league heading into a season, you’re probably going to be fine! It’s really hard to have a bad season at that point! The problem with St. John’s is that they have almost no reliable known quantities behind Champagnie and Alexander in the rotation. Dylan Addae-Wusu is the only other guy returning for the Red Storm that played regular minutes last season. That gives Mike Anderson three guys that he knows what to expect from them, and that’s just three guys out of somewhere between seven and 10 that you regularly see in a college basketball team’s rotation.Thus, the big question or questions for St. John’s is “Who is going to play the other 110-120 minutes a night?” They literally don’t know right now! I’m sure head coach Mike Anderson has a plan as to what he wants to do, but as the old adage goes: no plan survives first contact with the enemy. If you prefer Mike Tyson’s version: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.If you are inclined to see the most optimistic version of things, then it’s much easier to talk yourself into things working out well for the Johnnies. Tareq Cobeen and Stef Smith come in with pretty solid to strong college careers to this point, and if this is in fact their final year of college hoops, they’ll be motivated to make the best of it no matter what the coaching staff asks them to do. Montez Mathis and Joel Soriano know what it’s like to play big minutes and play notable roles on a team, and the fact that neither guy was necessarily the clear cut #1 guy on their team will most likely help them fit in behind Champagnie and Alexander in the pecking order.Boom, that’s a seven man rotation right there, and that’s before we even start working in Aaron Wheeler, who knows what it’s like to practice and play in the Big Ten, and Esahia Nyiwe who at least comes into this year with a semester’s worth of practice experience expectations with Anderson and the Red Storm. At that point, if the freshmen can give you anything at all, you’re doing pretty well for yourself. All you need these guys to do is just fill in around Champagnie and Alexander. You don’t need them to be world beaters on their own, just do the other things that lead to wins.Add in to all of that the fact that you’ve got Mike Anderson running the show. After 19 years of coaching Division 1 hoops, he has never had a losing season with just two .500 years in there. If there’s one thing we can rely on for sure here, it’s that Mike Anderson is going to figure out how to get his collection of players to win basketball games. At that point, it’s just a matter of figuring out how many they’re going to win. Given the number of questions floating over the rest of the league, it sure looks like St. John’s is going to go into the year with an inside track at winning enough games in league play to secure an NCAA tournament bid.
